Category: News

This is another patch release that fixes incorrect behavior and improves the stability of the engine. Some of the fixes affect data file identification, so if you’re experiencing issues with your WAD files or other resources, try selecting Clear Cache from the DE menu and restarting Doomsday so that all your data is reindexed.

This is a patch release that fixes a number of crashes and various cases of incorrect behavior. Many of the fixes are related to the new Home UI, but there are also other important improvements like faster model renderer performance.

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs in the release candidates! A number of nasty bugs were found and fixed. There is still a few less serious known issues that have been scheduled for next month’s 2.0.1 update.

Work on the 2.x series will now continue along the lines planned in the roadmap, with the first focus area being multiplayer improvements. Under the hood, there is still lots to do with updating remaining old OpenGL rendering code so we can take full advantage of shaders in future releases.

The third and possibly final release candidate of version 2.0 is now available (build 2272).

There is a whole bunch of fixes:

IWAD files are now recognized with stricter rules to avoid files from being misidentified as known IWADs. If you have been seeing problems dealing with WAD files in the Packages browser, try DE → Clear Cache and restart.

Under specific circumstances, opening the game profile package selection dialog would crash.

Hang when trying to spawn damage particles triggered by a very large amount of damage.

Light from the Torch powerup in Heretic and Hexen was rendered incorrectly.

3D model animation problem where a non-animating mobj would be repeatedly restarting its animation sequences.

Several UI glitches of varying severity. For example, the Update Available notification was triggering a fatal error, and there were occasional random color changes happening when UI widgets were being drawn.

Another notable change is that the folders where Doomsday looks for IWADs and other data files are now configured in the same Data Files dialog. I’ve added a new quick-access button to the bottom of the Home’s Packages list for opening this dialog.

This build has a number of bugfixes and minor improvements, particularly when it comes to loading and unloading data files. Some of the fixes affect metadata generated for data files, so if you’ve been running RC1, I recommend clearing Doomsday’s resource cache. This will also ensure that all add-ons are detected again, if some files were previously missing.

When one loads a savegame, Doomsday will attempt to load or unload resources depending on what was used in the save. However, this was quite buggy and could easily lead to a crash. There was also a mixup that caused Doomsday to try load and unload the same files twice. These issues are resolved in RC2.

I’ve made a couple of usability tweaks in Home. It should now be clearer when a profile is unplayable because the game IWAD is missing, or if the problem is that your selected additional packages are unavailable.

Another nice improvement is that the autobuilder now has a proper database stored here on dengine.net. This means that the download pages can show you the latest files instantly, and the build feed actually reflects the currently available data. The feed itself is dynamically generated from the database instead of being just a static file. Plus I’ve given the build report pages a facelift so they’re nicer to look at. Finally, all downloads are hosted primarily here on dengine.net, but they are also mirrored on SourceForge as before. The mirror download buttons can be found on the build report pages.

The full release notes will be available later, but the short version is that 2.0 introduces two big changes in how Doomsday works:

The Snowberry front-end application has been replaced with a new Home screen within Doomsday itself.

Doomsday has gained more understanding of various data file formats, resource packs, and add-ons so that it can load them without assistance from a front-end app. This Packages system has wide effects inside the engine, influencing game session configuration, savegames, multiplayer games, and the UI.

The updated Readme covers most of the new stuff, so that is a good place to start if you havent been using any 2.0 unstable builds recently.

There are certainly still bugs left to find and fix, so please report any problems you encounter with the RC build(s). The best place to do so is the Tracker.

In practical terms, development of the 2.0 release has been switched to the stable branch and is now in feature freeze mode. The master branch will roll over to 2.1 for new unstable builds. Now that the stable branch is using CMake as well, I’ve resumed the first-day-of-the-month stable builds.

I took a good look at the project roadmap in the Tracker and decided it was time to do some spring cleaning.

I’ve now updated the plan for the 2.x releases so that each version has a specific focus. For instance, the 2.0 release will focus on the Home UI and basic package management, and the 2.1 release will focus on multiplayer improvements.

While the roadmap is just a plan and plans may always change, defining a clear focus area for each version will help in pushing things forward. Not doing this would mean that each release has the risk of ballooning feature creep and features would likely not be fully baked.

Another topical issue to note is that due to the autobuilder upgrade, the stable 1.15 builds have been suspended until the stable build environment is updated to work with the new builder setup. However, I’m placing my focus on finishing features for the 2.0 stable release, so I don’t expect many fixes for 1.15 in the near future.

You may recall that last year, I decided to move my developer blog posts from the forums onto a separate blog. A number of other Doomsday web resources have also been sprouting outside dengine.net (like the bug tracker and commit tag index). When it came time to renew hosting of the website, I came to realize that it was time to sort out this situation and commit to the idea of a consolidated web presence for Doomsday — this was the motivation for moving to a domain of our own in the first place.